B2B Marketing Trends in the UK and Europe: 2011 Analysis

Introduction

Business-to-Business (B2B) trends making a significant impact in the UK and broader European market are the result of a higher level of accountability and focus on results driven by the global recession. As elusive as profitability has been for many enterprises, the trends included in this analysis have provided them with the ability to more effectively manage costs and risks while attaining growth in new markets. These trends also point to the growing importance of technology as an enabler of greater trust between enterprises, their supply chains, distribution channels, and their customers.

The global recession served as the catalyst for significant change in UK and European enterprises. The five most significant trends affecting B2B marketing in the UK and Europe include value-based selling, social networks and Web 2.0 pervasive adoption, the enterprise-wide adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS), greater emphasis on multichannel management, and analytics including business intelligence (BI) being used for measuring the impact of marketing campaigns in real time. All of these trends are predicated on how technology is being used to enable greater trust throughout enterprises' value chains.

Value-Based Selling Is Accelerating

The recession that began in 2007 served as a catalyst for significant change in how enterprises sell to each other, and this shift has become especially pronounced in the UK and throughout Europe. Manufacturing companies that sell to other manufacturers and rely on B2B transaction velocity to survive quickly realized that selling on price alone drained profitability and margin. The old adage of "making it up in volume" was deflated so quickly during the recession that many UK and European companies had to completely redesign their sales forces. Gone are the sales teams that promised much on price and delivered less in margin and profitability. The sales teams that replaced them in 2010 and continue to dominate sales forces in the UK and Europe take an approach more focused on educating prospects and clients, and less on the "hard sell" of pushing products or services onto customers.

This approach to value-based selling is predicated on delivering solutions and becoming indispensable to a customer's success rather than relying on price and the elasticity of a given market (Alderete, 2010). Value-based selling is also highly effective for mitigating customer churn, as it provides a more effective approach to customer listening than any price-driven approach can potentially deliver (Wright & Riebe, 2010). While the recession brought the need for value-based selling to the forefront of many industries that rely on becoming a trusted advisor to gain additional sales, its use has accelerated sales cycles through greater levels of communication (Zolkiewski, Lewis, Yuan, & Yuan, 2007).

Of the trends that have most influenced businesses across the UK, Europe, and globally, social networks and the platform of Web 2.0 technologies continue to be the fastest growing and most visible. The concepts of social networks are predicated on having an open, listening mindset as a company in order to better engage with customers in conversations they find relevant and useful (Bernoff & Li, 2008). Social networks are completely redefining many areas of enterprises' value chains throughout the UK and Europe, as these companies rely heavily on customer relationships outside their native nations. This has led to social networks becoming a conduit for conversations and completely rewriting the rules of customer relationship management (CRM) in the process.

Social Networking and the Influence of Web 2.0

All of these aspects of social networking and Web 2.0 technologies are also redefining customers' expectations for service responsiveness and support (Raddats & Easingwood, 2010). For UK and European enterprises, the rush is on to capture customer loyalty using social networks, in addition to customizing Web 2.0-based applications. The design objectives of Web 2.0 were originally articulated by Tim O'Reilly, founder and publisher of O'Reilly Media (Snow, 2006).

An interesting dynamic also emerging from social networks is the development of entirely different segmentation criteria and strategies within organizations, based on the insights gained (Agarwal, Malhotra, & Bolton, 2010). Analytics and business intelligence (BI) are being used to analyze social networks and determine potentially new, customer- and needs-based segmentation criteria (Agarwal, Malhotra, & Bolton, 2010). The insights gained from applying analytics to customer engagement through social networks reveal that there are needs-based segments driven more by the experience of using products and services than by price alone. This finding is having a profound impact on how enterprises segment services in B2B markets (Raddats & Easingwood, 2010).

In sum, the role of social networks and Web 2.0 technologies is revolutionizing the B2B marketing strategies of nearly every company in the UK, Europe, and globally. The need for authenticity and transparency is now pervading all marketing strategies, as trust becomes the new foundation for moving sales cycles forward (Bernoff & Li, 2008).

Conclusion

The continued adoption of social networks, Web 2.0 technologies, and the cultural changes they are bringing into companies is significant, and will continue to accelerate through 2011 and beyond. The recession forced higher levels of accountability regarding spending and the need to validate whether marketing strategies were indeed paying off. Given these dynamics, the five trends discussed in this analysis — value-based selling, social networking and Web 2.0 adoption, SaaS and cloud computing, multichannel management, and business intelligence and analytics — have emerged as the most dominant forces in B2B marketing throughout the UK and EMEA.